Explanation:
Young suns still lie
within dusty NGC 7129, some
3,000 light-years away toward the royal constellation
Cepheus.
While these stars
are at a relatively tender age, only a few million years old, it is
likely that our own Sun formed in a similar stellar nursery some
five billion years ago.
Most noticeable in
the sharp image are the lovely bluish dust clouds
that reflect the youthful starlight.
But the compact, deep red crescent shapes are also markers
of energetic, young stellar objects.
Known as
Herbig-Haro objects,
their shape and colour is characteristic of glowing hydrogen gas
shocked by
jets streaming away from newborn stars.
Paler, extended filaments of
reddish emission
mingling with the bluish
clouds are caused by dust grains effectively converting the
invisible ultraviolet starlight to visible red light through
photoluminesence.
Ultimately the natal gas and dust in the region
will be dispersed, the
stars
drifting apart as the loose
cluster orbits the centre of the Galaxy.
The processing of this remarkable composite image has revealed
the faint red strands of emission at the upper right.
They are recently recognized as a likely
supernova remnant
and are currently being analyzed by Bo Reipurth (Univ. Hawaii) who
obtained the image data at the Subaru telescope.
At the estimated distance of NGC 7129, this telescopic view spans
over 40 light-years.